After almost 20 years, Mean Girls has been causing a buzz as of late, mainly because some of the cast reunited to film a two-minute video for a Walmart ad promoting Black Friday deals. The video came out on November 1st and features Lindsay Lohan along with castmates Amanda Seyfried and Lacey Chabert who reprised their roles from the original movie, but this time, as their older selves with Lohan's character becoming a school counselor. On the other hand, Seyfried's Karen apparently became a weather reporter, and Chabert's Gretchen Wieners became a mom of a teenage daughter who's also going to the same high school they did.
Not only that, there is also a stage musical, written by Tina Fey, touring in Canada which will be showing on Edmonton, Calgary, and Vancouver next January. Along with the stage musical, a 2024 movie adaptation of the same will also premiere next January.
CleanTok is an area in TikTok where people share cleaning tips and one user, Rochelle Stewart, who goes by the handle @operation_niki, specializes in making videos for travelers. Whenever we travel, we have this confidence that the accommodation at which we will be staying will have done their best to clean and organize the rooms before guests check in. Whether it be a hotel or an Airbnb, cleaning is part of the service. But even with regular cleaning, Stewart said that it doesn't get rid of the germs, and some spots in the space may be dirtier than we think.
Even though it would be too troublesome to clean our hotel rooms right as we arrive, it wouldn't hurt to be a bit cautious. Stewart suggests that guests should pay particular attention to high-touch surfaces like sinks, counters, switches, faucets, and shower heads, as they would have thousands of times more bacteria than a toilet seat. And of course, the best way to prevent getting infected would be to employ hygiene practices such as frequently washing your hands, avoiding touching your face, and getting a sanitizing spray to disinfect those surfaces. Stewart shares her other essential cleaning tips for travels with Kathleen Wong of USA Today here.
Those are two things you normally wouldn't think of going together. It's a weird combination but at the same time it's not at all mutually exclusive either, as one could be a chocolate lover and love beer at the same time. However, the people at Uproxx have decided to ask craft beer artisans what are the best beers for chocolate lovers. Now, the concept is whether there would be beers that taste like chocolate or have a scent of sweetness to them, or beer that would go well with chocolate. Again, it seems odd to pair those two up, but actually, there are beers like the ones described above.
Some of these beers are definitely very niche and any beer lovers might find them different from the typical beer. Just from the names of these beers, you'll know they are targeting a specific group of people. For example, Yuengling Hershey's Chocolate Porter which has a 4.7% alcoholic content and costs $11 per six-pack. It includes Hershey's chocolate syrup, cocoa powder, and cocoa nibs, and it was brewed in collaboration with Hershey's. It's technically brewed chocolate, if you were to ask me. Check out the rest of the craft beers great for chocolate lovers on Uproxx.
Fried rice tastes lovely, and it smells heavenly while being cooked which whets your appetite, makes your mouth water, and dials up your craving a hundredfold, barely unable to wait for it to finish cooking and be served a whole plate's worth of the perfectly golden rice with scrambled eggs, peas, scallions, and some carrots as toppings. Adding one other ingredient onto the mix, shrimp, just makes it even more delicious. I've had my fair share of shrimp fried rice, and it's enough to make my day. And that's what Daniel Neman had thought one night, when he had suddenly had the urge to make some shrimp fried rice.
Now, as an amateur cook, I rarely deviate from recipes because I haven't had much experience cooking a variety of dishes yet, so it's much better to simply follow the instructions so as not to cause too much of a disaster. In Daniel's case, he had wanted to make double the portion allotted in the recipe, to maximize the ingredients. After buying the ingredients on the list, and adding some not on the list, he went back and started making the shrimp fried rice.
Following the recipe of J. Kenji Lopez-Alt, he cooked the jasmine rice which came out dry on the top but sticky at the bottom, which doesn't make great for fried rice. So, he chucked out the rice and used basmati instead. After that, he proceeded to fry it, but having mixed up the portions, he put more oil than the amount needed for the amount of rice in the wok, so it came out very oily, and that went into the bin as well.
Fungi can appear in different shapes and sizes, and you'll just be surprised what you might find growing underneath a tree as you walk through the garden, or so that's what redditor QualitativeEconomy happened upon while they were at Woodlands in Singapore. They took a picture of the oddly pizza-esque monstrosity and uploaded it online asking other people to identify what it may be. Many found it fascinating, others chimed in jokingly, and one redditor Impossible_Fun9649 suggested that it could be of the Laetiporus genus, which is coincidentally an edible mushroom.
Other redditors provided other alternatives as to the identity of the giant mushroom, with cupcakefantasy saying that it should be R. microporus, and livebeta asserting that it's chicken of the woods or sulphur shelf, aka Laetiporus sulphureus.
Perhaps the closest guess might be the one from nightaid who said that it resembles closely a mushroom from the Ganoderma genus, which are more locally known as 'Lingzhi' or 'Reishi' mushrooms. Adding more information about this type of mushroom, they say it has medical properties, with a shiny appearance often seen in a reddish-brown color. But to be more certain, a few redditors had also suggested that they ask r/mycology or r/whatisthismushroom for more expert help.
The concept of 'shrinkflation' has been floated around since the 1950s, although it has received quite a lot of attention in recent years especially as consumers have noticed how the products that they used to buy had decreased in size, number, or weight. The practice is done by manufacturers to assuage the effects of inflation and other factors like rising wages, increasing prices on raw materials, and the like on their profits. And as retail psychology goes, consumers will more readily notice an increase in prices over a decrease in the quantity or quality of the products, so from a retail perspective, it's much easier to simply shrink the products than to increase the price.
So, the question of whether or not it's advantageous depends on from whose perspective we're looking. Obviously, consumers bear the brunt of all these downsizing and cost-cutting practices that manufacturers implement to retain their profitability. However, in the long run, companies might be worse off as consumers become more aware and start to search for alternatives. This would be a great opportunity for low-cost products whose prices aren't affected by the brands that they wear. If you can find, for example, a bag of chips that is comparable to Pringles or Lays chips, but much cheaper, then consumers, especially those who are working on a tighter budget, would go for that.
The hard part of the whole shrinkflation ordeal is that most of the products hit are necessities such as toilet paper, sanitary pads, laundry detergent, shampoo and conditioner. Is it here to stay? It depends. There are many factors to consider and it may just be a necessary evil, however, it is also possible that it will just be a stopgap measure. All we can do is to become smarter in our grocery shopping and find ways to make our budgets work.
The other thing that resonated with me in his list is the fact that both of these activities are uncomfortable. The only way that you will find it bearable is if you do it a lot. Because by then, you will have become unfazed by the discomfort and simply go with the flow.
I haven't had any bad experiences with Airbnb yet, personally, although there was one place which I had booked for my parents and my mom's friend, wherein halfway through the rental period, they had decided to move out and switch to a different accommodation because the first Airbnb didn't have separate rooms and some issues with the bathroom. The host was gracious and understanding enough about the situation and it went off without a hitch. My parents and my mom's friend loved the second accommodation and their stay had been pleasant for the rest of their trip.
That wasn't the case for redditor fmbrandon who stayed with his family - wife and two kids - along with some friends at a San Antonio, Texas Airbnb. They decided that renting a house instead of three separate hotel rooms would be much cheaper, as it usually should, but were surprised to find a list of chores that they needed to do before leaving as well as a $165 cleaning fee. Much discussion has gone around on what Airbnb could do to improve users' experience and one recommendation that topped the list was to lower cleaning fees, which led to many listings either lowering or removing their cleaning fees.
It is common courtesy for guests to leave their accommodation without any heavy cleaning but in the same way, hosts shouldn't oblige their guests with a to-do list of chores before leaving. As for Brandon and his family, their host did leave feedback saying they were happy to have them back again despite their failure to complete the checkout instructions.
Lucid dreams sound pretty cool. You get to wake up in your own dream or become aware that you are dreaming while in the process. If you experience a lucid dream, it is said that you will be able to control the dream, which could make for some really wild dreams where, in some ways, you can make the impossible possible, or literally have your dreams come to reality, even if just in the dream world. It feels magical, and just being able to experience it must be an incredible feeling. Which is why a new tech startup called Prophetic wants people to have the ability to induce lucid dreams on demand, by creating a wearable device that enables them to do just that.
Right now, the company is working on the Halo, which detects when people are in REM sleep, and then, stabilize and induce lucid dreaming. According to their website, they want to use it in order to pursue answers to life's biggest questions. Of course, lucid dreams are said to help people overcome nightmares, relieve anxiety and PTSD, and even improve motor skills. The cofounders of Prophetic have no specific medical claims for their device, but are partnering with researchers to explore the technology and possible benefits.
The Beatles were a global phenomenon and it has been more than 40 years since the world has seen all four members of the legendary rock band together. It might be surprising to say that they have released a song, their last one, in 2023, but it was uploaded three days ago, on November 3rd, with vocals from John Lennon and contributions from all the other three. Even though there are only two remaining members of the band, with the help of new technology developed by Peter Jackson and his team, they were able to finally complete the song which had been in the works since the 1970s.
The song is called "Now and Then" and in 1995, the other Beatles members, Paul, Ringo, and George had started the project however, because there were no means at the time to separate the vocals which John Lennon had recorded two decades earlier from the piano parts of the tape, it could not progress any further. Until 2022, when the software system was developed and finally, the recording was brought to fruition. Now, we can listen to the Beatles' final song to ever be released with all four members contributing to its creation, "Now and Then".
I sometimes get cravings at the most inopportune times, and several of those times were during rainy days. I had terribly wanted some McDonald's one night and unfortunately, moments after I had ordered my food online, it started raining, heavily. I was living in Busan at the time, and my place was on a mountain, while the McDonald's was at the foot of the mountain. When my order had arrived, the rider gave me my food and hurried along.
After moving to Seoul, there was one rainy night, again, when I had a strong urge for some McDonald's. I logged on to the app, clicked on my usual order which I had already saved on the app for quicker processing time, and went to the checkout page. As I was about to pay for my meal, I was interrupted and the app said that they will be no delivery service due to intermittent weather. That was the first time I had encountered that, and as disappointing as it was, I understood the reason behind it. Nobody wants to risk their riders' safety just for some profit. The same thing happened when it snowed, and so I went out one snowy evening to buy some McDonald's, since I knew delivery services won't be in operation.
Hobbies differ in all shapes and sizes. Some people like collecting rocks, others do origami or papier mache; some people are into simple hobbies like baking or watching movies, while others are into extreme ones like skydiving or bungee jumping. There are people with more unique hobbies such as this guy named Edoardo Flores who described himself as a retired international civil servant from Turin, Italy who has amassed a large collection of hotel 'do not disturb' signs. On his Flickr, there are more than 20,000 photos of these 'do not disturb' signs and he says that he started collecting them while on a business trip in Pakistan.
How the collection became as large as it is, he recounts that after the first sign he took home, he just found himself becoming addicted to collecting them. And it's quite understandable as different hotels from various countries literally come in different shapes, sizes, formats, and styles. Most of them say 'Do Not Disturb' however, there are a few which just alludes to the fact. But each one tries to imbue a trait or characteristic into the design that is particular to the place where the hotel is located. To see some from the collection, check it out at Messy Nessy Chic. For the full collection, check out Edoardo Flores' Flickr.
Overall, we have come out of the pandemic tunnel which lasted for three years and we have learned a lot during that time. I was in South Korea for the entire time and as has been reported, the Korean government implemented strict guidelines of social distancing and other counter-measures such as wearing filtering face masks everywhere and practicing frequent hand-washing. At the start of the pandemic, Harry Stevens of The Washington Post wrote an article that showed a simulation of how a social distancing policy would affect the spread of a disease, which in his example was called simulitis. It is an interesting depiction of how diseases are transmitted and mitigated.
On a related note, Kevin Simler at around the same time, found that article very interesting and so decided to create playable simulations of a disease outbreak wherein one can adjust factors such as transmission rate, travel radius, encounter frequency, and mortality rates to see how those would affect the outcome of the outbreak. They are fascinating visual representations of how outbreaks worked, and quite informative on the possible preventive measures to mitigate their effects on the global population. And you may check out the various grid simulations he made on Melting Asphalt.
What's in a name? A person's name may determine how they and the people around them see themselves. It's a part of our identity and that's why it's very important for parents, especially new parents, to think carefully about their baby's name. You wouldn't want your children to resent you for giving them a name that would get them bullied at school or by the other kids in the neighborhood, would you? You don't want to know what kind of life Macaroni 85 or his siblings Spaghetti 88 and Sincerely Yours 98 have had to live.
Some people prefer passing on their names to their first child or naming their children after their parents, relatives, or favorite historical figures. Some hope their children will take after the people after whom they were named. Some want strong names, others want pretty names, and others want nice names. But how about a lucky name? Whether giving babies a 'lucky name' will actually make them favorably disposed to good fortune might be an inspiration for a possible future study, still, people who do give their babies 'lucky names' think it might help them later in life or think that the names are just pretty or trendy.
On the list compiled by Marie Claire, I find some really appealing names like Felix or Asher for boys and Iris or Kiara for girls. To see the complete list of the top 10 lucky baby names for boys and girls, check it out on Marie Claire.
Going through airport security can be a tedious ordeal, but on the other side, TSA officers must have encountered many weird things in passengers' suitcases, especially during Halloween season. It's probably no surprise, and as usual, they will always be on the look out for anything suspicious or remotely threatening, as it did on Halloween at Salt Lake City Airport.
TSA Officer Justin Buttars saw a skull as it passed through the scanner, which wouldn't have been too much of a scare, except that it appeared to have batteries and wires inside it. This alerted the officer and upon investigating, it was revealed that the skull was just a training aid for neurosurgery which was going to be used for a seminar and trade show in Cancun, Mexico. However, despite a reasonable explanation from the owner of the skull, it wasn't allowed to go through because it wasn't properly labeled and disassembled.
